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CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRACY 



CONSERVATIVE 
DEMOCRACY 



Principles and Practise of 
American Democracy 



<By PAUL KESTER 

Author of 
His Own Country 



INDIANAPOLIS 

THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 



Copyright -I 1 9 1 9 
The Bobbs- Merrill Company 






Printed in the United States of America 



OCT IOI9J9 



press or 

BRAUNWORTH & CO. 

BOOK MANUFACTURERS 

BROOKLYN. N. Y. 



©CU5 3 6JL18 



CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRACY 



Conservative Democracy 



DEMOCRACY 

Democracy is no new thing. It is as old as 
the hills. Indeed, it is much older. Its prin- 
ciples were latent and potential when this earth 
of ours was a hot mud ball whirling lividly 
through space. Its fundamentals belong to the 
eternal verities, and are as inevitable as logic, 
religion, evolution or the law of gravity. The 
mind can follow its evolution into infinity, while 
the humblest task which is done in its name will 
have beauty and dignity. 

Democracy, like Christianity, of which it is 
only another form of expression, is a perfect 
and complete philosophy of life, even more than 
it is a theory of government ; a true and beauti- 
ful thing, which requires not only appreciation 
but conformity to enable it to complete its serv- 
ice to mankind. 

In America we owe our democracy primarily 
to our fortunate heredity and to our fortunate 
environment. England gave us a heritage of 
stubborn personal freedom, a freedom unbend- 
ing and unbroken down all the centuries. From 
Scotland and from Wales and Ireland came love 



2 CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRACY 

of independence almost as strong in current and 
in kind. From the Low Countries and from 
the Valley of the Rhine came men and women 
seeking freedom. From France came a brave 
band of Huguenots. A great company, strangely 
diversified, but inevitably unified by a common 
passionate desire for spiritual and political 
liberty. 

To them opened a land as free and broad as 
the liberty they sought, a land unstamped by 
one association of old rule, by one tradition for* 
eign to the great end for which they sought it. 
That they did not use either their heritage or 
their environment always blamelessly is not so 
surprising in the retrospect as the noble use 
which in the main they made of both. 

But there can be no monopoly of democracy. 
Its evidences are scattered through every page 
of history. There have always been democrats 
In the world — men governing themselves by the 
pure theory of democracy. Men have been 
groping toward democracy all down the ages. 
They have sensed it and lost it; have recovered 
it, only to lose it again, and again to recover it. 
It has long had partial practise under various 
forms of government and under many names. 
Without its leavening influence no state or gov- 
ernment could have endured. 

Power had its origin in the association of men 
for a common purpose. Out of this association 
grew leadership. Through all the ages power 



CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRACY 3 

has sustained itself as best it could. Sometimes 
it was the people's friend, more often, through 
abuse, it became their enemy. Authority, to 
perpetuate itself in the control of the agencies 
of power, early began to clothe itself in sophis- 
try. It allied itself with religion, with super- 
stition, with nationality, with patriotism, with 
personality, that it might the better play upon 
the strong element of love and loyalty which 
abides in the human heart. 

The theory of the divine right of kings, of 
infallibility, and all the kindred sophistries, 
were advanced primarily as aids to authority 
and to the perpetuation of authority. A vast 
web, a vast network in which to enmesh the 
minds of men, was thus begun, to increase 
which power and authority have never ceased 
to strive. 

Under this handicap a great portion of man- 
kind still labors. But back of these shifts of 
power and authority to maintain themselves 
and to extend their sway lay deep principles, 
the principles of cooperation, order, justice, 
security and progress, the recognition of indi- 
viduality, the principles of democracy. 

From time to time prophets arose; law- 
givers, philosophers, great religious teachers, 
great generals, great and good kings; a noble 
host, which, self-impelled, led the long exodus 
down the dim ages from ignorance to enlight- 
enment. 



4 CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRACY 

All these old forms and agencies of power, all 
the continuing currents of influences ancient 
before our time, have left us a heritage of both 
good and evil, and it was only the rebirth of a 
people in a new land that enabled any great 
body of mankind simultaneously to view the 
whole course of events in perspective and to 
assort the elements of government and recom- 
bine them to form what we now call American 
democracy. Without this separation by the 
sea it is doubtful if the human family could 
have evolved our philosophy of government and 
have put it into practise in the last quarter of 
the eighteenth century. 

In England, and on the Continent as well, 
freedom had long been consciously stirring. 
Personal democracy was in some respects fur- 
ther advanced in England than with us, but we 
had not the unbroken succession of governing 
ideas, nor the long continuity of rule, with its 
natural attachments, to constrain us. Tradi- 
tion had been broken in a measure at least by 
the influence of ocean and of wilderness, and, 
while England is to-day in many respects a freer 
and more democratic nation than our own, yet 
we like to believe that she owes something of 
her democracy to the colonial Britons who set 
up American democracy on the foundations of 
their English inheritance of character and tra- 
dition. 

It is only, then, within comparatively recent 



CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRACY 5 

times that men have become consciously aware 
of the higher principles which have compelled 
and guided the advance of nations; and it is 
only now that they are able in any numbers to 
renounce and throw off the baneful influences 
which have so long sought to perpetuate gross 
governmental abuses, and to enslave their 
minds, that they might continue to dedicate 
them to the perpetuation of institutions which 
have long outlived their usefulness. 

Few of us realize that, potent and wide of 
application as democratic institutions are to-day 
and vital as their spread and continuance must 
be to all mankind, the actual numbers of those 
who believe in democracy and who attempt to 
live in accordance with its simple principles are 
few in comparison with those who give their 
allegiance to altogether different governmental 
theories. Indeed, hundreds of millions of 
human beings, still the vast majority of the 
inhabitants of the earth, believe themselves in- 
different or hostile to its tenets. 

II 

RIVAL THEORIES OF GOVERNMENT 
The educational value of the great war can 
not be overestimated. The most terrible event 
in history has become the most instructive. 
And it has befallen at a time when the com- 
munication of facts and ideas is immediate 
wherever civilization extends. Our era is re- 



6 CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRACY 

ceptive beyond any other which history records. 
Never before were peoples and nations so gen- 
erally sensitive or so responsive to ethical 
standards. 

While we do not perhaps believe that the 
world has been altogether changed by the war, 
nor that war itself will never come again, nor 
that our tasks resulting from the war are neces- 
sarily final, nor indeed that we are called upon, 
now and forever, to settle all matters national 
and international; while we realize that self- 
determination belongs to generations as well as 
to peoples, and that the generations of the 
future will undoubtedly exercise their right, yet 
we do believe that ours is a great moment in 
history and that ours is a great duty, ours a 
great opportunity. 

When vast numbers of free men voluntarily 
and simultaneously act upon principles, those 
principles, however abstract they may seem, be- 
come, through their inspirational power, vital 
forces in the material world, and the most lit- 
erally minded must take account of them if he 
would understand the obvious evidences which 
bear witness to their application upon every 
hand 

The public safety requires that we should not 
only find the mainspring of our actions in true 
basic principles, but that we should be con- 
sciously aware of the soundness of the beliefs 
which sway us and which dictate our actions* 



CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRACY ? 

The element of free will and choice which man- 
kind enjoys makes our part in evolution a con- 
scious, intelligent and purposeful part, and 
places upon us an obligation which we do not 
appear to share with any other living thing. 
Having been taken as it were into the confidence 
of the Creator, we can not betray the confidence 
reposed in us, and it is plain that there can be 
no consistent application of principles which are 
neither definitely apprehended nor clearly com- 
prehended. To do well by chance or accident 
is fortunate, but it is not so desirable as to 
advance steadily along a path made clear by the 
light of understanding. Faith has its high 
functions, but it should not be dulled by groping 
with the obvious. 

Two governmental theories, in themselves 
abstract, have been vividly illustrated before 
the world, clearly and unmistakably identified 
with the two groups of combatants, while a 
third has suddenly become aggressive and has 
spread like a pestilence over Russia. 

With the return of peace three governmental 
systems will be urged upon the acceptance of 
mankind: these are autocracy, thinly disguised 
as imperialism; socialism, in its various forms, 
and democracy. Upon the choice our genera- 
tion makes depends, in no small measure, the 
peace, well-being and development of the whole 
world. 



8 CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRACY 

m 

AUTOCRACY 

Autocracy, as autocracy, has exposed itself 
in all its final hideousness. No evidence could 
have brought it so low as the complete and 
awful evidence which it has voluntarily borne 
against itself. Might without right is utterly 
discredited. But the autocratic spirit is not 
dead. It is still to be reckoned with, for it 
remains, more or less securely entrenched, 
wherever centralized power exists, whether in 
republics or in monarchies, and it will not pass 
from the stage of human affairs without a 
mighty struggle. There is an autocracy of the 
spirit as well as an autocracy of act. Both are 
utterly at variance with democracy. 

Obvious autocracy, we all know, stands for a 
highly efficient misapplication of the energies 
and abilities of a nation. It deifies power and 
makes ends of means and subverts the whole 
reasonable scheme of organized society into an 
agency for its own aggrandizement and per- 
petuation. It creates a tyrannical centralized 
energy oppressive to those who jnaintain it and 
menacing to all others. Imbued with this 
spirit, Germany has run the whole gamut of 
abominations. We all know beyond peradven- 
ture that autocracy is without mercy, honor, 
decency or any saving sense of humor. Com- 
mon sense abhors it. 



CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRACY 9 

If we carry autocracy to its logical conclusion 
we arrive at a small ruling class and a nation of 
slaves; slaves free only to practise their sub- 
ordinate abominations upon those weaker than 
themselves. A hopeless brutalization of high 
and low. The glorification of things which are 
in no sense glorious, the deification of material 
things, the enthronement of force, the suppres- 
sion of reason. 

Autocracy, with its inevitably inflexible and 
imperialistic methods, is impatient of all stand- 
ards save its own, and in its choice of means it 
is both arbitrary and violent. It is indifferent 
to the burdens which it imposes. It is advo- 
cated by those who desire to rule over others 
rather than to govern themselves. It gives an 
external expression to rather coarse, obvious 
and somewhat obsolete ambitions. 

IV 

SOCIALISM 

Socialism is the second system which man- 
kind is invited to adopt. If there is a beneficent 
socialism it is not with it that the world is now 
concerned. Emerging from beneath the broken 
wings of autocracy, the socialism with which 
the world has now to deal would end all wars 
between nations only to begin a universal war 
of classes. We in America may well ask, with 
some apprehension, what socialism, with its 



10 CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRACY 

advocacy of class warfare, contemplates when 
it comes to the backward races. The negro in 
America practically constitutes one class. Is 
class warfare here desirable, and to what limits 
does the application of this principle extend, or 
within what limits is it confined? 

The whole theory of socialism, though much 
exploited, is still vague and as yet practically 
untried save as a parasite of autocracy, of which 
it appears to be the essential by-product. So 
far as it is popularly understood, and so far as 
its evidences have been observed, it is both lev- 
eling and compulsory, partial in vision and 
prejudiced in judgments, and partial in the ends 
at which it aims. It is concerned for the wel- 
fare of a class, not for all humanity. It would 
stamp out a pattern and say to mankind, grow 
after this fashion. It merely seeks to set up 
drab-colored masters in the place of those more 
brilliantly bedecked. It stands for the arbi- 
trary division of material values. It is re- 
straining. It is impatient. It seeks to correct 
one social injustice by imposing another. 

It incites bitter antagonisms in indivisible 
bodies with the hope of profiting by the havoc 
created. In practise it appears destructive. It 
has no spiritual aspirations. It is as agnostic 
and as material as autocracy. Its best excuse 
is that it was born of revolt against intolerable 
conditions, and represents the effort of the peo- 
ple, distorted and unbalanced by autocratic in- 



CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRACY 11 

stitutions, to restore some sort of proportion 
and to survive in an unnatural relation. 

Like autocracy, socialism is totally devoid of 
humor. It is full of cant, catch-words and a 
cheap and obvious hypocrisy of brotherhood. 
It is permeated by restlessness, excitement, 
egotism and bitter fanaticism. Its pronounced 
sympathy for autocracy is not as strange as it 
seems, for socialism is itself autocratic. 

Autocracy and socialism, and the spirit of 
arbitrary power which is inseparable from each, 
attracted by the success of the American ex- 
periment, and its wide field of operation, are 
now seeking to graft their insidious formulas 
upon our healthy institutions that they may 
crowd out the vigorous normal growth of true 
democracy. To permit either to invade our in- 
stitutions, which even with our best endeavors 
are as yet none too sensitive to the spirit of 
democracy, would be to retard the progress of 
mankind in the exact proportion to the influence 
exerted by their agencies. 

It is therefore of the utmost importance that 
those who believe in democracy should hold fast 
to their faith, resisting all easy opportunism 
and all plausible sophistries, and press on un- 
swervingly in the service of their high ideals, 
remembering that they alone bear witness be- 
fore the non-democratic millions who have yet 
to make their election that in democracy is, in 
very truth, the little leaven which must leaven 
the whole world. 



12 CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRACY 



SOME FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES OP 
DEMOCRACY 

Democracy is concerned far more with indi- 
vidual conduct than with the governmental 
agencies of a free people. But as governmental 
agencies and governmental activities react di- 
rectly upon the people to their great advantage 
or to their detriment, democracy must concern 
itself with bringing such agencies and such 
activities into conformity with its principles. 
Democracy never lighted a fagot, never used 
the rack, never set torch to building, never 
resorted to cruel or unusual punishments, never 
pursued selfish ends. Humanity aligns itself 
with the principles of democracy, and seeks to 
give those principles effect through all govern- 
mental agencies as the only means of securing 
for itself a just, peaceful and unhampered evo- 
lution. 

Democracy is the practise of pure equity be- 
tween individuals; between individuals and 
communities; between communities and na- 
tions, and between nation and nation. In the 
last analysis democracy governs by develop- 
ment, not by restraint. It promulgates laws 
rather than enforces rules. It develops the best 
that is in us in our relations to one another, and 
it governs through the forces which it awakens 
in our hearts. It seeks to give the broadest 
possible application to the highest possible 



CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRACY 13 

standards; to insure intellectual and spiritual 
freedom, to remove every mental and spiritual 
barrier which tends to deform, belittle, becloud 
or subjugate the minds of men. Enlightenment 
is more important to it than attainment. Cure 
rather than punishment is among its tenets. 

Democracy is the best of the heart inter- 
preted by the best of the head, with a reason- 
able allowance for the human equation. It is 
a state of life in which no human act is unim- 
portant. It is all inclusive, the pressure of its 
obligations rests evenly on all alike. The daily 
life of the average citizen is as much a function 
of democracy as the acts of so-called govern- 
mental agencies. This root principle of democ- 
racy permits a thousand activities which are all 
parts of a harmonious whole. It is on this prin- 
ciple that the law of individual initiative rests 
so securely. 

In practise democracy is orderly. It is stable. 
It seeks only those readjustments in human re- 
lations which tend to enduring betterment. It 
works with the flow of evolutionary forces, 
never in opposition to them. It makes to-mor- 
row a better day for every living thing. 

Democracy represents the force of many hon- 
est wills and clear intelligences working collect- 
ively and harmoniously for the general good. 
Democracy recognizes that true liberty rests 
finally upon the self -development and self-con- 
trol of the individual. It cherishes honest self- 



14 CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRACY 

reliance. Democracy recognizes moral force as 
the great determining factor, and this it seeks 
to supplement by the natural sequence of logical 
thought and logical action. 

Democracy is tolerant and elastic in opera- 
tion. It permits of easy adjustments. And it 
is patient because it is sure. It is as beneficent 
as the sunshine and the rain and as impersonal. 
It has no part in any brutal or arbitrary act. 
All who shelter themselves beneath it are not 
of it. It is not thin, anemic nor attenuated. 
There is nothing whatever to be afraid of about 
it. It is hearty, simple, smiling, friendly, 
homely and human. It recognizes the right of 
the individual to happiness, to the reward of his 
labors, and to security in his peaceful pursuits. 
It is good will and justice between men. It is 
the highest common sense. Its processes are 
open to all, but its living spirit alone assures 
any man a place in its great company. A king 
may be an absolute democrat, a petty official 
may be an odious despot. It is the animating 
spirit which determines. 

Democracy is the only philosophy of govern- 
ment which can solve all problems with justice 
and with evolutionary practicality, for it is 
merely a sane application of true principles. Its 
standards are simple. It appeals to the intelli- 
gence. It asks no faith which is not founded 
on reason and no allegiance which is not of the 
heart. 



CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRACY 15 

Democracy is of wide sympathy. It excludes 
none. It victimizes no class. It penalizes no 
class. It is the only form of government which 
recognizes no class distinctions ; to which servil- 
ity is as abhorrent as arrogance ; which neither 
seeks to make men rich nor poor, nor to perpet- 
uate any class in its condition, but which seeks 
continually to equalize opportunity, and to deny 
hope to none. The tide rises and falls, but there 
is no submergence. Only in a true democracy 
can the Christian philosophy of life find full ex- 
pression ; and it is upon this supreme philosophy 
that our slowly developing practise of democ- 
racy must rest. 

Democracy is open in all its dealings, for it 
has nothing to conceal. Men develop freely in 
its atmosphere. It calls for no sacrifice of the 
things of the spirit. It asks no compromise of 
honor. It follows the broad middle path. It 
has one spirit, but many applications. It is not 
rigid. "Do unto others as you would have others 
do unto you," is the first of its tenets. 

Democracy takes into account the ethical 
verities, and it practises forbearance, justice 
and mercy. It can sustain the weak and reas- 
sure the strong. It cares little for externals, 
and pomp and the symbols of power are not 
necessary to it. It is full of neighborly kind- 
ness and good will ; it is patient and long suffer- 
ing, and its power is only terrible to the tyrant 
and the oppressor. It venerates no man except 



16 CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRACY 

for his virtues, and its awe is reserved for kind 
and patient women, and for those who do well 
and make no boast. It is without fanaticism. 
It is without extravagance of expectation. Its 
passions are none the less strong because they 
are controlled. 

In the whole range and scheme of democracy 
there is nothing destructive. It is certainly an 
agency of the evolutionary force which urges 
the advance of mankind toward a goal which 
though as yet unseen may be perceived. It is 
not an experiment, though we, in our ignorance 
and half-understanding, may experiment with 
the application of its principles in seeking to 
discover their full meaning and to align our con- 
duct with them. 

VI 

DEMOCRACY INCLUSIVE IN PURPOSE 
Democracy aims at the highest possible 
human attainment, not merely an average but 
an individual attainment, and it so seeks to ap- 
portion opportunity with responsibility that a 
complete and harmonious development shall re- 
sult. Its purpose is not government by mob, as 
some suppose, but self-government by highly 
developed, responsible citizens, competent in 
every sense to perform their public duties. The 
democratic principle is that the responsible indi- 
vidual unit contributes, and only collectively 
controls. 



CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRACY 17 

Democracy freely admits that developed, en- 
lightened and responsible intelligences and 
aroused consciences have necessarily and inev- 
itably greater obligations to organized society 
than less developed and awakened intelligences. 
But it is the single purpose of democracy to in- 
crease the number of such intelligences until 
all are included, and this by opportunity quite 
as much as by tutelage, precept and example. 

While democracy undoubtedly seeks the uni- 
versal application of its principles, it would be 
absolutely untrue and misleading to say that all 
individuals, all races, all nations, are at this 
moment competent to exercise self-government 
on democratic principles. It is true, however, 
that all that is best in any form of government 
wherever found is allied to democracy, and 
that all races and nations, however backward, 
must sooner or later reach a period in their evo- 
lution when a democratic state becomes the 
normal state. 

VII 

NECESSARY LIMITATION OF PRIMARY 
REPRESENTATION 

Democracy presupposes competence. It is 
impossible to concede to all, developed and unde- 
veloped alike, the same influence upon public 
events. Their incapacity debars the backward 
not from the exercise or enjoyment of private 
rights, but only from the performance of public 
duties. 



18 CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRACY 

The right of representation which is inherent 
in suffrage, and which suffrage implies, pre- 
supposes capacities and entails obligations. 
This primary right of representation, upon 
which all legislative and administrative author- 
ity rests, belongs only to those competent to the 
discharge of the obligation assumed. It is not 
a vested right of citizenship. Those under age, 
those disqualified by disease or other affliction, 
those not yet enfranchised, all these find in the 
man with the ballot their first and most essen- 
tial representative. Only developed capacity 
justly entitles any man to exercise of this pri- 
mary representation. Latent capability de- 
mands opportunity for development only. Its 
time of service follows but can not precede the 
process of development. 

It is only fair and frank to admit that democ- 
racy could not, if it would, hand over its respon- 
sibilities to those unfitted to exercise them, but 
it can not be too clearly stated that it seeks by 
every legitimate means to hasten the day when 
all men shall be competent to their responsibili- 
ties. Democracy recognizes that the develop- 
ment of the individual is the only real security 
of the state, that it is the inalienable right of 
the individual, and that it is equally the right 
and concern of his fellows. Clod-like ignorance 
and unquestioning obedience no longer sustain 
any government or safeguard any state of so- 
ciety. Semi-developed, excited, irresponsible 



CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRACY 19 

and aggressive intelligences constitute the chief 
peril of our time. Ours is evidently a period of 
transition. When education becomes so gen- 
eral that true enlightenment follows this peril 
will have passed. 

Perhaps the highest accomplishment of our 
attempted application of the principles of de- 
mocracy, surely the most hopeful sign, is to be 
found in the wide-spread evidence that this bet- 
ter enlightenment has become as general as it 
is real among us. Sound citizenship is the only 
true foundation of sound and enduring govern- 
ment. Where evolution is unhampered revolu- 
tion is discounted. 

VIII 

DEMOCRACY A SELF-IMPOSED RULE 
Democracy is a self-imposed rule of the peo- 
ple for the self-development of the people, and 
its limits are determined by its obligations. De- 
mocracy seeks to rouse a sense of moral respon- 
sibility which replaces external control by 
self-control. This is not to say that laws are 
needless in a democracy. They are in fact very 
necessary to define those boundaries where en- 
tity touches entity, and to indicate the duties 
and obligations of the one to the many, and of 
the many to the one. They are the social con- 
tract of the mutuality of individual interests. 
But their origin is solely to be found in the will 
of the people who by this means give expression 



20 CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRACY 

to their desire to live in conformity to the 
higher law. Laws can be increased or reduced 
in number and in kind as circumstances dictate. 
Men conform to them rather than are con- 
strained by them in the theory of democracy. 

In principle the law, or conformity to rule by 
common consent for the common advantage, 
intervenes only when a man, or group of men, 
in the pursuit of what he or they consider their 
rights or pleasures or advantage, trample upon 
or encroach upon the rights of others. 

Freedom and opportunity should be the por- 
tion of every man ; to deny him these is to rob 
him of something which is his, to oppress and 
thwart him. But to prescribe his use of either, 
so far as that use relates to himself and does not 
encroach upon the freedom and opportunity of 
others, or unfit him for the duties of citizenship, 
is a hothouse process of paternalism to be 
avoided by practical democracy. 

Democracy takes into account that no two 
men are alike. That human beings are not cast 
in a mold. That while there should be a basic 
equality of opportunity there can not be a 
basic similarity of experience. Similarity of 
development, in the sense of perfection of devel- 
opment, can only be obtained by different 
means. Individuality, environment, choice, 
free will, even climate and sea and land, moun- 
tains and plains, render similarity as impos- 
sible as it would be undesirable. Dwellers in 



CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRACY 21 

Sahara and dwellers in New York City may be 
one in spirit, but their outward circumstances 
are as dissimilar as the camel and the subway. 

It is obvious that a country thinly settled by 
a pastoral people requires a very different set 
of rules for the just guidance of its people from 
that required by a densely populated modern 
city. It is reasonable that people living to- 
gether in special countries and under special 
conditions should determine the rules, or laws, 
or obligations to which they consent, as best 
suited to their special needs. The outlines of 
nationality and the principle of self-determina- 
tion rest upon such differences in human en- 
vironment and experience. 

In time of war or famine, or in the face of 
some great disaster we know that rules become 
necessary which in normal times would be in 
the last degree restrictive, oppressive and inex- 
cusable. Circumstances may, therefore, cause 
the expansion or contraction of the number and 
kind of rules by which democracy operates as a 
governing force ; but the principles of their cre- 
ation and the equality of their application, as 
well as the effect of their application on the free 
spirit of the individual, should be unchanging. 

Democracy, in principle, never loses sight of 
the rights of the individual in its concern for 
the rights of society as a whole. Yet no prac- 
tical form of government has ever produced 
citizens more ready to sacrifice themselves, one 



22 CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRACY 

for another, or many for the good of all, than 
has democracy. 

IX 

STABILITY OF DEMOCRACY 
Democracy, while progressive in movement, 
is conservative in principle. This has aroused 
the resentment of irresponsible radicals and 
reckless fanatics. Democracy, which is at all 
times and under all circumstances sensible, 
takes conditions as they are and endeavors to 
improve them as speedily as possible, but its 
spirit is opposed to pillage and massacre, and it 
does not desire to see the continuity of evolu- 
tion broken by a riot of destruction as a neces- 
sary prelude to reformation. 

There is nothing whatever alarming about 
democracy to any well-intentioned person. De- 
mocracy respects property rights because they 
represent individual rights. Mine and thine 
are words with very distinct meanings which 
democracy clearly understands. Such ma- 
terial rights are not needlessly abridged, al- 
though they must continually be adjusted to 
conform to higher and more important human 
rights. 

Democracy values its institutions, and the 
caprices of the hour do not readily divert it nor 
stir its depths. It distinguishes between es- 
sentials and non-essentials, but it should not be 
disconcerting because of this. The tides of life 



CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRACY 23 

flow onward to a fuller appreciation and to a 
continually broadening application of democ- 
racy, but they do not leave behind the least of 
the essential principles which we have already 
apprehended and applied. 

Democracy enables us to be the direct 
agents of a swift and beneficent evolution, and 
to know that we, as conscious and responsible 
agents, contribute materially to that evolution. 
No bequest, however vast and well bestowed, 
can so benefit those who come after us as the 
simple passing on of an undiminished heritage 
of true democracy. 

Democracy, repudiating as it does all ex- 
traneous control save that which has its origin 
in the common consent, a consent to which each 
individual has agreed by his representatives, 
imposes upon itself stability, order, discipline, 
the sense of obligation, and above all, respect 
for the rights of others. It shuns license in all 
its forms. 

License is more abhorrent to democracy than 
to any other form of government for, provok- 
ing by its excesses the very restraint it would 
evade, it places a premium on arbitrary control. 
License is an intemperate abuse of freedom 
with which democracy can have nothing what- 
ever in common. The two can not be recon- 
ciled. 



24 CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRACY 

X 

r 
THE PRACTISE OP DEMOCRACY 

The comprehension of democracy requires an 
open mind. The willingness to practise democ- 
racy presupposes a love of justice, an under- 
standing of fair play, and an eagerness for that 
high type of civilization which causes men to 
desire for all those benefits which formerly each 
sought for himself alone. 

Two things are to be reckoned with in any 
serious consideration of democracy. The prin- 
ciple and the application. If the principle be- 
hind any action is sound and the application is 
sincere and honest though inadequate, the re- 
sult, however unsatisfactory, must command 
respect. But when the principle upon which 
we act is correct and exalted and the applica- 
tion perfect, man, we may be sure, is approach- 
ing his highest development. We have not in 
our practise of democracy passed from the 
experimental stage into the latter and happier 
stage. But we have made progress. 

Democracy sets up a government with a con- 
science ; a government with a heart as well as a 
government with a head. It does not seek cen- 
tralization of government, nor to heap power 
into pinnacles, but individual and national 
freedom in the most literal sense. The love of 
home, the love of country are so sacred to de- 



CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRACY 25 

mocracy that it would have all men mutually 
respectful of these deep-seated passions. 

The practise of democracy should develop a 
strong and self-reliant people, a people con- 
sciously and intelligently aware of the advan- 
tages of their form of government, and watch- 
fully jealous of its preservation. There is 
abundant evidence that democracy in America, 
both in the United States and Canada, is devel- 
oping such a people. Even racial backwardness, 
as represented by the negro, and social and 
political backwardness, as represented by the 
flood of immigration from countries unfriendly 
to our institutions, the alien one-tenth among 
us, have not materially retarded our advance. 

A republic may rest on forms; a democracy 
can only rest on living principles. A republic 
may be imperialistic, or democratic, or social- 
istic. A limited monarchy in which the will of 
the people is given effect by legislative repre- 
sentation can be infused with the essential prin- 
ciples of democracy. Any representative form 
of government which derives its existence from 
the free and continued and approving consent 
of those who maintain it may serve as the 
agency of true democracy. Democracy de- 
mands no stereotyped or arbitrary form of 
government, but it does require agencies 
perpetually sensitive to the will of the people. 
Democracy is not based upon standardization. 

The administrative group in England is much 
more closely allied to the legislative body, and 



26 CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRACY 

is more responsive to its wishes than our own 
administrative group is to our legislative body. 
In England the administration must be contin- 
ually sustained by a majority of the legislative 
body or it automatically surrenders office. 
Whereas the administrative group in Washing- 
ton, deriving its authority solely from the presi- 
dent, is secure in its tenure of authority for the 
duration of the administration. 

XI 

GOVERNMENT A MEANS, NOT AN END 
Government is not in itself an end. It is 
only a means. It is only a somewhat elaborate, 
and usually awkward and costly, agency set up 
by the people, or by the masters of the people, 
for the conduct of the public business. Its 
operations are carried forward by the paid serv- 
ants of the people ; whether the payment takes 
the form of tribute or of salary is immaterial ; 
the people pay in either case. With us govern- 
ment is merely the agency through which the 
principles of democracy are applied to the man- 
agement of the public business. The public 
business is none the less the people's business 
because it has passed beyond the control of indi- 
viduals, as such, and beyond the control of com- 
munities, to be dealt with by special agents of 
the people, appointed by the people and having 
no authority whatever save as the representa- 



CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRACY 27 

tives of the people. Government is not de- 
mocracy. 

Government is merely the agent of national- 
ity, at most the representative of nationality, 
it is not nationality. Change in government 
does not mean break in nationality. The na- 
tion continues though the government may 
change. But government has always been un- 
willing or reluctant to acknowledge this dis- 
tinction, having always as its chief concern its 
own preservation, and has therefore attempted, 
time out of mind* to clothe itself in the sacred 
garment of nationality, seeking for its own ends 
to confuse the one with the other, hoping thus 
to hold men's allegiance. In the scheme of 
democracy an incubus is an incubus, and for an 
incubus to call itself a government does not 
change the fact. 

Though government and nationality are dis- 
tinct, a fat and overtoppling government may 
cause the rapid decline of a nation. A bad gov- 
ernment may involve a nation in ruin. Dis- 
eased governments, vain governments, parasite 
governments, corrupt governments, insane gov- 
ernments, inefficient governments, egotistical 
governments, mankind has suffered from them 
all, and all alike have claimed his loyalty in the 
name of nationality. 

It is the purpose of democracy to establish 
and to maintain a sound, sane and efficient in- 
stitutional authority by the consent and sup- 



28 CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRACY 

port of all citizens; it is not the purpose of 
democracy to set up or to maintain individual 
authority. Confident as we are of our institu- 
tions we can not afford to forget that even our 
own admirable government is not and never can 
be the sole guardian of our freedom, nor that it 
can have no permanence, stability or volition 
apart from the will of the people whose creation 
and instrumentality it is and whose hopes and 
aspirations it reflects. 

XII 

THE REPRESENTATIVE PRINCIPLE 
The representative principle is the real and 
unique medium of practical democracy. The 
administrative group has always been neces- 
sary to every form of government, monarchial, 
imperial, republican or democratic. The legis- 
lative department very early made its appear- 
ance in almost all forms of government. It 
was only when the conduct of legislation became 
representative, and voiced the will of the people 
and not the will of a class, that it became demo- 
cratic. Representative legislation is more vital 
to democracy and more truly the instrument of 
democracy than representative administration. 
It is less liable to bias and corruption. Through 
its agency the people never relinquish their con- 
trol of their government or institutions. They 
are represented always by their spokesmen and 
active agents, who give direction to the admin- 



CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRACY 29 

istrative branch of the government and pass 
enabling legislation, without which the admin- 
istrative department would be utterly pow- 
erless. 

XIII 

DEMOCRACY AND ITS GOVERNMENTAL 
AGENCIES 

The executive department, even in a demoCr- 
racy, has been known at times to exhibit a cer- 
tain jealous impatience, a certain domineering 
aggressiveness, in its relation to the legislative 
department which is not always edifying; and 
a tendency is at times observable in the former 
to coerce the latter into actions often against 
its better judgment on the plea of administra- 
tive necessity. 

Pressure is continually being brought to bear 
by the executive branch of the government to 
secure the passage of measures vital to the suc- 
cess of administration policies, which are, con- 
ceivably, not of equal importance to the nation 
at large. This is a form of usurpation. Pro- 
vincialism and narrow party spirit survive even 
election to high office and give disconcerting 
evidence of themselves. Measures are hurried 
or held back by party control for party pur- 
poses, and in a hundred ways the executive 
branch of the government is making dangerous 
inroads upon the province and authority of the 
legislative branch. Such a tendency savors of 
autocracy rather than democracy. 



30 CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRACY 

XIV 

THE ADMINISTRATIVE GROUP 
When it is remembered that every member 
of the Senate and the House of Representatives 
is directly elected by vote of the people, and 
that each man represents the deliberate choice 
of a constituency, and when it is also remem- 
bered that of the entire administrative branch 
of the government not one member, save the 
chief executive, is elected ; that all, cabinet min- 
isters, heads of the great departments, ambas- 
sadors, ministers, consuls, all federal office- 
holders in the various states and territories, as 
well as the chiefs of the army and navy, with 
the subordinates of all these to the number of 
thousands, are all appointed by the one sole 
executive who has received the votes of the 
people, it should be at once evident which is the 
truly democratic branch of our government, and 
which the branch to safeguard most jealously 
from encroachment. 

The officials appointed by the president and 
who with him comprise the administrative 
group, may very fairly represent the adminis- 
tration of the day, but they can not be truly 
said to represent the people at large. It is well 
known that many receive office as a reward for 
purely party services, and at times individuals 
of such singular unfitness have been chosen that 
they have been driven from office by public 






CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRACY 31 

clamor. Generally speaking, they no doubt 
make excellent agents of the chief executive, 
which is the purpose for which they are chosen. 
But it can not be forgotten that certain of them 
have sufficient initiative to commit their admin- 
istration to definite policies, with which policies 
the people have had no initial part, and of 
which they may not approve, though they per- 
force become responsible for them. 

These appointees of the president in time of 
crisis, acting as they must in the name of all 
the people, are very frequently men quite un- 
known to the country at large ; adroit and serv- 
iceable politicians, men schooled in the manipu- 
lation of conventions, rather than disinterested 
and dispassionate public servants. Among 
those holding the highest offices in the gift of 
the president have been men who have never 
been elected to any representative body. 

And this is permissible under our Constitu- 
tion, for the president, who is charged with the 
responsibility of carrying on the government, 
must be free to summon or dismiss all his sub- 
ordinates at will or no harmony of executive 
action could be assured. 

But such a formation of the administrative 
group removes it very widely from the legisla- 
tive body which is directly chosen by the people 
and which is directly answerable to the people, 
and which is directly dependent upon the people 
for continuance in office. 



32 CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRACY 

All executive officers who initiate should have 
but a limited tenure of office, for their power to 
fasten policies upon the nation is very great and 
might, with the best intentions, be abused. On 
the other hand, the long continuance of senators 
and members of the House of Representatives 
in their places has been shown by experience to 
be desirable. These men are surrounded by 
their equals, and can only by superior abilities, 
and the advocacy of wise measures, gain or 
hold any unusual or predominant influence with 
their fellow legislators or with the people at 
large. 

Atrophy may sometimes threaten a legisla- 
tive body, but autocracy can scarcely find a less 
responsive tool than the legislative representa- 
tives of a free people. The choice of such 
representatives should never be tampered with 
nor influenced by power of any sort ; neither the 
money power, the power of organized labor nor 
entrenched political power should be permitted 
to influence the choice of the people's repre- 
sentatives. 

XV 
THE ECLECTIC MAJORITY 
The administrative group derives its vital 
powers constantly from the representative 
body, and it is chiefly through the representa- 
tive body that majority rule is given effect. In 
a democracy it is vital that the eclectic major- 



CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRACY 33 

ity, ever changing, ever being recruited by new 
and alert elements, should wield a controlling 
influence within well defined, constitutional lim- 
itations. 

The majority is the agency of governmental 
evolution. It affords stability to sound leader- 
ship while it relegates the unfit to the ranks. 
It gives authority to men and measures. It 
can continue or withdraw support and so exerts 
a cooling and a sobering influence. It can apply 
the brake to headstrong administrations. It is 
the instrument of the intelligent minority, for 
it is never fixed nor stationary. It alters con- 
tinually as new issues arise or old issues come 
to fruition through general acceptance. It is 
constantly depleted and as constantly recruited. 
It has the cutting edge of a buzz saw. It is a 
large evolutionary body, audible as a steam 
whistle in a democracy, but powerless, except 
by violence or rebellion under autocracy. 

In a democracy the majority is never a mob. 
It records its approval or its disapproval of gov- 
ernmental measures, and of public servants, at 
frequent and fixed intervals. The constant 
breaking up and reforming of majorities per- 
mits an almost liquid flow of social and political 
ideas throughout the whole nation. The ma- 
jority constitutes indeed almost a third legisla- 
tive body, and any citizen may raise his voice 
and exert a direct influence in its assemblies, 



34 CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRACY 

and if his cause is good, and his time well 
chosen, he can accomplish much. 

The voice of the majority speaks the final 
mandate of the people. If properly understood 
and honestly used the majority is the only es- 
sential form of initiative and referendum. It is 
a strong and terrible force wholly in the hands 
of the citizen. While the citizen makes just 
and intelligent use of this power his representa- 
tives can not and dare not go far astray. 

XVI 

PUBLIC BURDENS 

Increased taxation, in one form or another, is 
inevitable in a developing country. But once 
we have, by private and by national enterprise, 
made available all the wealth of our natural 
resources, and made efficient our control over 
them, then, if taxation is to be still further in- 
creased, the point of safety will be passed and 
we shall see in our own land something very like 
the Oriental tax gatherer, who seizes all that 
the unhappy owner can not conceal. 

There is a common sense and reasonable limit 
to public burdens just as there is a point at 
which taxation becomes so oppressive that it 
can not be endured. Because a course is taken 
it does not necessarily mean that it should be 
followed to extremes. If reason dictates a cer- 
tain policy at a certain time it can determine 



CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRACY 35 

also the emphasis which should be placed 
upon it. 

The people can have too much of almost any- 
thing, public burdens included. The size of the 
mill should be proportionate to the grist which 
comes to its doors. How much government for 
how many people, not for how many officials, 
is an important question with which practical 
democracy must reckon in the near future. No 
man's back should be bent by public burdens in 
a democracy. 

Nations which have lived under extravagant 
and bloated governments have invariably ex- 
perienced long periods of exhaustion. We have 
only to remember India, Persia, Egypt, Greece 
and Rome to realize that exhaustion rather 
than military conquest may well account for 
their long seasons of quiescence and the shift- 
ing of power to other empires. This exhaustion 
has appeared to effect not only material power, 
but intellectual and spiritual power as well. 

The exploitation and exhaustion of natural 
resources was never so swift or so general as 
at present, and while we may look to science 
and invention to extend our knowledge and con- 
trol of such resources to limits far beyond those 
at present apprehended, we must still exercise 
a reasonable frugality in our use of them, re- 
membering that we are tenants of a generation 
only, not owners in fee. 

Extravagance is always under suspicion. It 



36 CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRACY 

is a form of recklessness to which office-holders 
have been strongly addicted from the earliest 
times. If the brake on governmental extrava- 
gance which the Constitution places in the 
hands of the people is not sufficiently strong to 
be effective it must be strengthened or made 
more efficient in some way. This of course 
applies more especially to normal times, but 
even in time of war, and the period of readjust- 
ment which follows war, the need for the judi- 
cious expenditure of the people's money only 
increases with the vastness of the sums in- 
volved and the imperative need of their direct 
application to their essential uses. 

The momentum of government should not be 
headlong. The progress of government must 
be an orderly, intentioned and directed advance. 
Uncontrolled momentum has swept many na- 
tions to destruction. Unwillingness to halt and 
to consider, inability to retrench, indifference to 
ultimate reckonings, all these are indications of 
a downhill grade. No other form of extrava- 
gance can compare with governmental extrava- 
gance. From time immemorial the willing and 
the unwilling alike have given blood and treas- 
ure for the maintenance of governments; pri- 
vate indebtedness has been met by private 
means, solvent generation has succeeded solvent 
generation; while bad governments by wars, 
mismanagement, corruption and inefficiency, 
have loaded the people of the whole world with 



CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRACY 37 

almost incalculable debt. The people have al- 
ways been held responsible by government ; the 
time has come when the people must hold gov- 
ernments responsible. The material lightening 
of the burdens of government as the develop- 
ment of the individual increases is a very defi- 
nite end toward which society should proceed. 

XVII 

DEMOCRACY AND INDIVIDUAL OPPORTUNITY 
While American democracy may, and does, 
and always shall, we hope, rejoice in shirt- 
sleeves and in crossroads philosophy, and while 
it still maintains a time-honored association 
with tobacco chewing in high places, it is not 
opposed to order and dignity and beauty. Nor 
is true democracy in the least antagonistic 
to true aristocracy. Indeed, from the founda- 
tion of the nation there has been a strong and 
useful alliance between democracy and respon- 
sible and contributive aristocracy, and the alli- 
ance remains firm to-day. 

Only those profoundly ignorant of life con- 
tend that aristocracy is merely a thing of pos- 
sessions and externals. It is the flowering of 
our civilization, and all that is best in life and 
environment has contributed to its making. Its 
finer forms represent those things which we all 
admire and which, consciously or unconsciously, 
we all desire to make our own. Among the rea- 
sonable aims of democracy the first, perhaps, is 



38 CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRACY 

to bring about that equal justice in things ma- 
terial, things intellectual, and in things spirit- 
ual, which shall insure to each of us our inalien- 
able right to that full, rich and balanced 
development of body, mind and spirit which 
alone constitutes true aristocracy. 

Democracy has no quarrel with rounded and 
completed lives. Democracy believes that all 
lives should be full, rich and complete. And to 
attain this end democracy believes that both 
self-development and self-restraint are neces- 
sary for every individual. It teaches the strong 
and fortunate to serve, and it gives freedom and 
space to the souls of the poor. When democ- 
racy is perfectly apprehended and perfectly ap- 
plied all men and all women should be both 
fortunate and strong. Meanwhile there are no 
servile people in America, or if there are they 
have missed the spirit of our institutions. 

Democracy has more to do with character 
than with circumstances, although it is vitally 
concerned with those circumstances of life 
which warp or belittle character. While we real- 
ize that our practise of democracy is incomplete, 
and that our system is very far from the equi- 
table and perfect thing it should be, and which 
we mean it shall become, we are yet so conscious 
of our progress, we so prize our inestimable 
heritage, that we regard with serious misgiv- 
ings any radical deviation from the course 
which thus far has been so successfully pur- 



CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRACY 39 

sued, and we have not ceased to believe that 
there is room for every man to win his just 
share of material prosperity in our rich land. 

Still holding this belief, we, as a people, are 
undoubtedly reluctant to set in motion those 
restrictive measures which would aim at the 
arbitrary equalization of material conditions, 
preferring to leave to individual initiative and 
the vast natural resources of the nation that 
equalization which we all know to be both neces- 
sary and desirable. 

With all our faults and immaturities, with 
promise yet outweighing performance, Amer- 
ica remains a democratic nation, responsible, 
keen, altruistic, self-reliant, kind and helpful, a 
nation guided in its advance by none but honor- 
able purposes. Greed, we admit, is practised 
here, but not with any particular genius by the 
typical American. Wealth and the agencies of 
wealth are passing very rapidly to the control 
of other races who, in some measure, hold them- 
selves distinct from the spirit of our institu- 
tions. 

The typical creative American, the real 
American, is not as a rule a money-getter of 
the spider type. He is a democrat. He prefers 
to work freely, outside of combinations, and he 
is not natively a usurer nor a hoarder. He and 
his people have long enjoyed the ease and free- 
dom of a wide-open land, and their instinct is 
to trust to their own energy and the bounty of 



40 CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRACY 

their new world rather than to hoard and con- 
nive for gain, or so to regulate wealth and in- 
dustry as to eliminate material inequalities, 

There has been, undoubtedly, a keen zest in 
battling with the vast economic problems of a 
new and undeveloped continent. Strong men 
have performed titanic labors, which have ad- 
vantaged themselves and the whole nation. 
There has been a race for wealth, a perform- 
ance not altogether unrelated to the contests in 
which great athletes have indulged; a rivalry 
of vigorous minds in dealing with new problems 
in new ways in a new world. 

The masterful men who have exemplified this 
transitory phase of our development have been 
recruited from no special class, but have been 
representative of the enterprise and energy as 
well as the constructive genius of the whole 
people. They constitute no class. It is the 
fashion to decry these pioneers and their labors. 
Time will present them more truly to the gen- 
erations which come after us. In certain re- 
spects they were splendid examples of de- 
mocracy. 

The abuse of wealth, and of the power result- 
ing from the possession of wealth, is antago- 
nistic to the spirit of democracy. But wealth 
is a force, and its intelligent use in the hands of 
individuals has already accomplished so much 
for the world in every department of human 
affairs that its total abolition, which socialism 



CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRACY 41 

would accomplish if it could, might very well 
retard human progress and bring about a 
static condition which would inevitably be fol- 
lowed by decline and decay. 

Individuals can experiment where govern- 
ments can not venture. There are provinces of 
human happiness which await discovery and 
exploration ; there are countless individual pur- 
poses, countless necessary adjustments to life, 
which only the individual control of means per- 
mits to reach fruition. The better standards of 
life, the recognition of the universal right to 
happiness, we owe to individual initiative. The 
good which is to become general must first be 
individual. Socialism would pool all the world's 
wealth and place it under the control of a bu- 
reaucratic committee. Democracy would inter- 
pose no barrier between the individual and his 
free opportunity save that necessary self-re- 
straint which takes into account the rights of 
others. 

It would seem a mistake to limit unnecessa- 
rily such individual experiments, such individual 
discoveries, such individual explorations and 
adjustments which have conferred such benefits 
upon mankind, by arbitrarily denying to indi- 
viduals the means and opportunity to make 
them. We can not compel the human race to 
seek happiness by rote. Man's individual con- 
quest and mastery of natural resources is 
fundamental ; it is only his forced labor in asso- 



42 CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRACY 

ciation with his fellows which is artificial. De- 
mocracy maintains that it will be less difficult 
to adjust the latter relations than to encroach 
upon those instinctive rights which men derive 
from the former. The voluntary element in 
life can not with safety be replaced by even the 
most beneficent form of state compulsion. 

Here again, as in all things, democracy would 
leave to the individual as wide a latitude as pos- 
sible with justice to society at large. The bal- 
ance between use and abuse must be struck and 
maintained, the glutton and the vulture type 
can not be permitted to exploit their fellows, 
but a thousand initiatives are more apt to pro- 
duce good results than a single governmental 
initiative given effect by a bureaucratic 
autocracy. 

Democracy, which recognizes that voluntary 
social obligation is the better equivalent of con- 
formity to social control, is consequently loath 
to submit to narrow governmental or executive 
direction any social agency which can be sus- 
tained in organization and operation and main- 
tained in the efficient fulfillment of the purpose 
for which it was set in motion outside govern- 
mental agencies. All activity being, in accord- 
ance with the theory of democracy, governed by 
principle, government itself becomes only one of 
its many agencies of social regulation and 
control. 

The instrumentalities of progress should not 



CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRACY 43* 

be diminished or restricted needlessly. And 
manifestly wealth is one of these. The evi- 
dence which has thus far been advanced in sup- 
port of the socialistic contention that all wealth 
should be concentrated in the hands of the state 
to be doled out like soldiers' pay does not seem 
at all conclusive. 

The over-concentration of wealth, and the 
flagrant abuse of the power of wealth, of which 
the evidence is world old, present grave prob- 
lems for consideration and solution. But they 
are not insurmountable nor so difficult of settle- 
ment that wealth and the power of wealth 
should be altogether removed from private con- 
trol. Intelligent use of the accumulations of 
man's energies and of nature's vast resources, 
which together constitute wealth, is a duty 
which devolves upon organized mankind. 

Already the principle is very generally recog- 
nized that few things actually belong to any 
one, or are left by society undisputably and un- 
restrictedly to the use of any one. Those things 
which we enjoy in common with others, or 
which we share with others, or which bring us 
into any sort of relation with others, can not be 
defined as absolutely our own. 

Ownership is of brief duration ; it is in fact 
only another sort of obligation, for the recogni- 
tion of stewardship has long been general. The 
property of the subject in times past was 
always at the mercy of the sovereign, confisca- 



44 CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRACY 

tion was frequent. The property of the citizen 
seems now to be none the less at the mercy, or 
the disposition, of the state. 

Limitations will undoubtedly be set from 
time to time to the amount of wealth, and the 
power of wealth, which society feels it safe to 
entrust to the keeping of one man, or to the 
stewardship of any set of men, or trust, or cor- 
poration. But such limitations should not in- 
volve wars upon wealth, nor the abolition of 
reasonable property rights. 

The home and the means with which to main- 
tain it independently are linked too closely and 
too inseparably with life, liberty and the pur- 
suit of happiness to be swept away by social- 
istic doctrines. While men go about the world 
designated by names long continuous in their 
families, and not by numbers, while personal 
attachments survive, and local attachments re- 
main, there is likely to remain also some form 
of property ownership, and some reasonable and 
particular material reward for thrift and effort, 
the control of which shall not be wholly re- 
moved from our hands to be taken over by some 
man behind a desk who has no sympathy with 
us or with our purposes. 

XVIII 
DEMOCRACY AND INHERITANCE 
Democracy does not take issue with the 
transfer of reasonable material wealth from one 



CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRACY 45 

generation to another by bequest and inherit- 
ance. But it undoubtedly maintains and as- 
serts its right to set definite limits to the 
amount of wealth and the power of wealth 
which may pass by such means. Where inher- 
itance encroaches upon the equalization of op- 
portunity, or even upon the ultimate equaliza- 
tion of distribution, it runs counter to the spirit 
of democracy, but not otherwise. 

Concerned as practical democracy must be 
perforce with the reasonable regulation of pri- 
vate inheritance it is far more deeply concerned 
with the preservation and just and undimin- 
ished transmission of what may be called the 
public inheritance. This public inheritance is 
a thing so vast, so absolutely free to all men, 
that it dwarfs private inheritance completely. 
It is made up of all the enlightenment of the 
ages; of man's developing conception of re- 
ligion, philosophy, justice and humanity; of 
science, invention, of knowledge of all sorts ; of 
literature, art and music; of all the gifts of 
civilization ; of the clearer vision, from genera- 
tion to generation, of honor, ethics and beauty ; 
of innumerable benefits which enrich us and 
enfold us day by day; an inheritance from 
which all free and enlightened men may fill their 
lives with every high essential, taking as much, 
or little, as they choose. With this public inher- 
itance democracy is most vitally and practi- 
cally concerned, its purpose being to increase its 



46 CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRACY 

sum and its just distribution until no man or 
woman can be found beyond its reach and in- 
fluence. 

XIX 

DEMOCRACY AND ECONOMIC ADJUSTMENT 
Democracy would not lightly barter away our 
present economic security of condition in all 
classes, partial and imperfect as it is, for any 
untried panacea. Here again it is apparent 
that an experiment is not necessarily a solution. 
Our present economic arrangements accomplish 
certain ends, and are instrumental in sustaining 
those making effort as well as in sustaining 
those already secured by the accumulations of 
past effort. Credit results, in great and small 
amounts, and some measure of peace and eco- 
nomic security is the result in all classes. 

This is a natural evolution of the relation of 
mankind to our complicated material environ- 
ment. Much remains to be perfected, but 
enough has been gained to indicate the course 
of our advance. The security of the individual 
must be further increased and guaranteed with- 
out diminishing either his independence, his 
free will or his incentive to effort. 

These problems of adjustment democracy 
recognizes, but the value of what has already 
been achieved of economic justice is too great 
to risk its total loss by any violent severance of 
our traditions, Improve we must, destroy we 



CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRACY 47 

may not. Economic vitality must be main- 
tained and individual opportunity preserved 
while we withdraw every discoverable barrier 
which interferes with the evolutionary flow of 
economic forces. 

No true democrat would deny to another any 
advantage which he desires for himself ; that is 
axiomatic. But he does not wish to be limited 
by a low average, nor to be denied the right to 
any sort of well being, material or otherwise, 
which he may be capable of attaining so long as 
the pursuit of his purpose does not curtail the 
same advantage, or the opportunity of such ad- 
vantage, to his fellows. Democracy means a 
steady leveling up, just as socialism appears to 
mean a steady leveling down. 

Applied democracy is going forward almost 
too rapidly along these lines of curtailment; 
and it is in some danger of overriding its funda- 
mental principles in its eagerness to set right 
world-old abuses which are not of its own crea- 
tion. It needs to borrow no idea of confiscation 
or punishment of wealth from the philosophy of 
socialism. As rapidly as individual enterprise 
combines capital and labor and produces indus- 
trial agencies of importance to society at large 
society at large will supervise them or control 
them. 

And this process will be correct. But it 
should not be accompanied by injustice. The 
captain of industry, evexi the capitalist, should 



48 CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRACY 

not be thrown to the clamoring mob of discon- 
tented foreigners who do not as yet understand 
nor value our institutions, and who blame us for 
the wrongs which they have suffered under 
autocracy. Even the capitalist should be fairly 
dealt with by his own people so that his contri- 
bution to the general welfare shall be justly ap- 
portioned. 

Property rights have long been defined. Spe- 
cial measures have been taken for their protec- 
tion from the earliest times, but very definite 
burdens and obligations have accompanied 
these rights; only those who live by the daily 
labor of their hands are unaware how heavy and 
restrictive these burdens and obligations may 
become. The rights of labor are now being de- 
fined and safeguarded by special measures. 
This is most just and necessary. Broad social 
justice is absolutely essential to democracy; it 
is the essential aim of democracy; but labor 
must not be surprised if with its special privi- 
leges, its immunities and its increased well be- 
ing, go hand in hand increased obligations and 
more definite responsibilities to organized so- 
ciety. 

XX 

DEMOCRACY AND MODERN INDUSTRIALISM 
Modern industrialism presents new and com- 
plex problems into which we must look deeply ; 
but the world is not yet ready to accept the 



CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRACY 49 

standard of the industrial worker as its only 
and final standard, and this as much in fairness 
to the industrial worker, and those dependent 
upon him, as to the rest of society. His condi- 
tion is not and should not be more static than 
that of any other citizen. 

Democracy is the most responsible of all 
forms of government, just as it is the most con- 
servative. It sets apart no class. It is opposed 
to cast distinctions. Its mandates are delivered 
by the people in their entirety acting with good 
will toward one another, with confidence and 
mutual esteem. It aims at the steady elimina- 
tion of all class feeling by freedom and equali- 
zation of opportunity. Diversity of interest 
and occupation are inseparable from freedom; 
these produce difference of material condition, 
but such a difference of condition based on free 
choice outlines no arbitrary class distinction. 
It is a small price to pay for independence. The 
free man who in a free country follows the voca- 
tion of his own choice has no just grievance 
against any one. 

Democracy is opposed to permanent social 
stratification of any sort, and it is reluctant to 
advocate measures which recognize such arbi- 
trary distinctions between man and man. How- 
ever, democracy is as capable of the satisfac- 
tory solution of industrial problems as it is of 
solving any other political or social problem 
which may arise. Freedom, justice and equity 



50 CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRACY 

are concerned in such problems. Democracy is 
eliminating human hindrances by adjustment 
and by readjustment, and will continue to do so 
until spiritual, intellectual and physical freedom 
become as naturally ours as the air we breathe. 

Our age of invention, with its harnessing of 
steam and electricity, our era of exploitation, 
must be followed by periods of adjustment, and 
of readjustment, and these adjustments must 
evolve from the conditions themselves if they 
are to be of enduring value. 

Once the just ends of labor have been ob- 
tained any further progress of its separate aims 
and interests becomes a form of oppression 
quite as iniquitous as the tyranny of wealth or 
any other form of tyranny. 

Organization of wealth, organization of class, 
organization of race, or the organization of 
those of separate nationality, can only be re- 
garded as so many threats in a democracy, 
which is in itself an organization of society in 
which equal justice is sought for all alike. Like 
party administration such organizations, if not 
pressed to extremes nor used as agencies for 
the subversion of the government, if not in- 
spired by ruthless selfishness or blind fanati- 
cism, may accomplish good. But it is a fine 
line which is drawn between their advantages 
and their disadvantages. The extortionate 
monopoly which seeks to exploit the nation's 
resources, and the strike which would paralyze 



CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRACY 51 

the nation, or the organization of anti-American 
foreigners, are all outrages upon the nation and 
hindrances in the path of democracy. 

XXI 
SOCIAL RIGHTS AND PRIVATE RIGHTS 

Already it may be said that actual private 
rights are comprised of the residue remaining 
to the citizen after all public rights and claims 
have been satisfied. The property owner must 
pay his tax or lose title to his property. He 
can not forbid streets or roads to cross his land 
if public need or even public convenience de- 
mand that they should. Confiscation follows 
speedily upon neglect to comply with the de- 
mands of organized society. Ownership of 
material things, and freedom in their use, are 
relative terms which are every day destined to 
receive a narrower and stricter interpretation. 
You may use, but you may not abuse, is a law 
of organized society. No title holds against it. 

It becomes doubly necessary, then, to safe- 
guard the vital interests which each individual 
has in the great pool formed of rights conceded 
to general society for the advantage of all. Of 
these social rights the citizen is more surely 
possessed than he is of what we may term his 
residue of personal rights. 

Government must administer that portion of 
these social rights which comes within the 
range of its activities with absolute equity, and 



52 CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRACY 

their sum can not be abridged to the people by 
one hair's breadth without dangerous usurpa- 
tion. The government is the people's agency, 
and the people are obligated to observe its work- 
ings closely at all times so that abuses may not 
be permitted to fasten themselves upon it or its 
great and simple purposes be subverted to serve 
private ends. 

XXII 

DEMOCRACY AND GOVERNMENT OWNERSHIP 
There are not wanting evidences of a deep 
and wide-spread anxiety that the government 
is entering upon a policy which is to survive in 
the form of socialism and government control 
after the period of reconstruction, an order of 
things in which method and system and cen- 
tralized authority shall supplant individual 
initiative. This is undoubtedly to be appre- 
hended. 

The need for concentration which the war 
occasioned will form habits of mind favorable 
to such a tendency. But it should be remem- 
bered that government ownership is not neces- 
sary to government supervision nor even to gov- 
ernment control. It should also be remembered 
that while social adjustments and social regu- 
lations are in no sense contrary to the spirit of 
democracy, when they are necessary, the con- 
trol aimed at by true democracy is self-control, 
and that we should be very sure of our ground 



CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRACY 53 

before we commit ourselves too deeply to even 
the most beneficent paternalism. 

It is not safe to supplant liberty merely with 
order. There may well be such a labyrinth of 
rules and regulations that freedom will be lost 
in the maze of its intricacies. The veins and 
arteries of life must not be atrophied by too 
many restrictions. Nor must too vast a power 
be placed in the hands of any man. 

To pass our difficulties on to the government 
is not necessarily to solve them. Government 
has always sheltered more incompetence than 
private enterprise. Believing that all human 
activities are parts of a perfect democracy and 
that government is only one of these, it is obvi- 
ous that it is democracy itself which is all in- 
clusive and not government. While industry 
is free it is a partner with government, a sepa- 
rate agency of democracy, which is, like govern- 
ment itself, answerable in all things to the 
people. Absorbed by government, it becomes 
its tool and slave. Government ownership must 
necessarily create a vast class without initia- 
tive ; only, or chiefly, concerned with perpetuat- 
ing itself in office. It would sap self-reliance 
on a colossal scale. It would undermine char- 
acter, withdraw opportunity, increase party 
power, and consequently favoritism, and be a 
perpetual excuse and reservoir for inefficiency. 

At no time can the place of governmental 
affairs in relation to human affairs be lost sight 



54 CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRACY 

of with safety. Government must not be per- 
mitted to develop into an octopus. It then be- 
comes the ready-made instrument of the 
usurper, who diverts it from its legitimate uses 
to serve his own selfish ends. 

The essential tasks of government are those 
which can be performed by no other human 
agency. With these, and with these only, it 
should concern itself. These tasks are so 
numerous and so pressing, and are so certain to 
increase, that no unnecessary burdens should be 
placed upon governmental agencies lest in car- 
ing for its non-essential duties essential govern- 
mental duties are forgotten or obscured. 

XXIII 

PATERNALISM 

Paternalism is always perilous. It is not in- 
herent in the governmental agencies of a free 
people. Paternalism reduces a people to a state 
of dependence upon an influence which may at 
any time be withdrawn to be replaced by incom- 
petence or tyranny. Democracy places its de- 
pendence solely upon self-reliance and reliance 
upon principles as unchanging as they are in- 
finite in application. Individual responsibility 
is the corner-stone of democracy, the life ele- 
ment of its institutions. Whatever strikes at 
this, or seeks to control or usurp its operations, 
strikes at democracy. 

Paternalism is based upon a benevolent com- 



CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRACY 55 

pulsion. But compulsion is never long benevo- 
lent. Socialism, which is the policy of the con- 
sciously weak, appears to advocate an autocratic 
form of paternalism; democracy, which is the 
faith of the consciously strong, rejects it abso- 
lutely. Democracy can not be practised by a 
people requiring guardianship. 

Paternalism has more of the love of the 
schoolmaster in its composition than the love 
of the father. Ink flows in its veins rather 
than warm human blood. It presupposes im- 
personal wisdom, infallible judgments, and 
unfailing justice doled out by all-wise public 
officials. Experience teaches us that such 
expectations are never realized. 

Democracy is a subjective force working al- 
ways toward objective good. Paternalism 
would replace it by objective standards. Pater- 
nalism would standardize conduct and would 
even prescribe limits to thought if it could. De- 
mocracy allies right principles with right ac- 
tions by a process wholly voluntary on the part 
of the individual. Paternalism would direct 
our lives by the printed formulas of the tax 
gatherer, the health officer, and the police mag- 
istrate ; we should, under its rule, enjoy benefi- 
cence by commission, inspiration by proclama- 
tion, patriotism by permission, and happiness 
by bureaucratic regulation. Paternalism is a 
smooth-spoken cousin of autocracy ; it is not re- 
lated in any way whatever to democracy. 



56 CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRACY 

The action of governmental agencies upon 
personality is not only a process of order; it is 
a psychological process as well. In turn the 
psychology of the people reacts upon the gov- 
ernment ; thus it is evident that people and gov- 
ernment must go forward together or backward 
together. It is equally evident that there is a 
variety of government which while highly effi- 
cient in material ways kills or deadens aspira- 
tion and so may cause a whole people to lose its 
vision of the eternal verities. Without this 
vision all law and order becomes merely a mat- 
ter of externals and of expediency, and the 
whole fabric of government, externally perfect, 
may be in truth dead, rotten or insane. No 
government should ever outgrow the control of 
the nation. 

XXIV 
DEMOCRACY AND FREE WILL 

We must not forget in our desire to solve all 
problems relating to material welfare that there 
are certain inherent human rights upon which 
we must on no account trespass. Even the 
Creator, and every law of nature, permits the 
exercise of choice and free will in all sentient 
things. The government which does not take 
account of this principle, or which denies it a 
natural exercise, will succeed only in storing 
energy for an explosion. Living by rule under 
the eye of the schoolmaster, the government 
official and the police would become an abomina- 



CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRACY 57 

tion. A people who would consent to such a 
system would be incapable of caring for them- 
selves. 

There is a very well defined limit to the num- 
ber and character of the rules and regulations 
to which human nature can submit with safety. 
Organization and system must not strangle in- 
dividuality and self-reliance if democracy is to 
survive. Only a free people can maintain a 
government for a free people. Without self- 
reliance democracy could not survive. Order, 
method and system are excellent servants; de- 
mocracy needs them as servants of its agencies, 
but they might prove poor masters. The open 
road has its charm as well as the railway track. 
One is as useful to humanity as the other. 

We must take care that we do not, in the 
name of a higher efficiency, set up a vicious 
circle of control. The laws which guide the 
expression and advance of democracy can not be 
compulsory either in purpose or effect. Obli- 
gation, not compulsion, must be the controlling 
force of individual action in a democracy. Obli- 
gations we acknowledge, compulsion we abso- 
lutely reject. 

Coercive measures of any sort, no matter how 
plausible and alluring, should be steadfastly 
avoided and opposed except in national extrem- 
ity, and then only accepted for a limited time. 
A constant and ever-increasing curtailment of 
the liberties of the individual is inevitable in 



58 CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRACY 

any highly organized society. But the true lib- 
erty of the individual is not lost to him, as it 
survives in the life of the whole people. For 
his concessions he receives the concessions of 
his fellows. 

The demands of modern civilization are al- 
ready so manifold and complex; the effect of 
our age of invention upon human character is 
still so problematic, so experimental, that if 
we lose clearness of vision and singleness of 
purpose in relation to our governmental agen- 
cies the overwhelming mechanism of life may 
well daunt the bravest spirit. 

While this sacrifice of individual liberty re- 
mains voluntary and is undertaken for the gen- 
eral welfare and along lines prescribed by the 
people themselves, and not by a paternal gov- 
ernment, it may be in itself disciplinary, and 
therefore a certain moral development may ac- 
company it which will mitigate the sacrifice 
entailed and even convert it into a lesson in the 
great school of democracy. 

For example, the obligatory military training 
now so generally, and so justly, advocated would 
be a submission, by consent, for a brief and 
specified period, to a system of military instruc- 
tion which would insure the best possible 
preparation to meet a supreme danger which 
circumstances have shown may possibly arise. 
It is scarcely just to our young men that the 
nation reserves the right to call upon them to 



CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRACY 59 

render the most important and perilous of all 
public services, to risk their lives in its- defense, 
without first having taken every reasonable 
precaution to insure their fitness and ability to 
respond to the demand which may at any time 
be made upon them. 

This obligation of preparation would rest 
upon all alike, and would be of equal advantage 
to all, subjecting all within certain age limits to 
a like discipline and development for a like pur- 
pose, and for a like length of time. The experi- 
ence of reasonable people will lead them to con- 
cur in such a course at this stage of the world's 
history. It seems the best insurance which the 
nation as well as our young men could take out 
against the dangers of war. 

On the other hand, compulsory vocational 
education is indefensible on any but socialistic 
grounds. With government control of labor it 
would complete a vicious circle of arbitrary con- 
trol and turn our free school system into the 
first step toward involuntary life servitude. 
The individual would be lost in the machine ; his 
material capacities having been estimated by a 
socialistic state as well worth the sacrifice of 
his free will. 

Vocational training, if not compulsory, is an 
admirable thing. Every fair inducement might 
well be held out to the free student to make a 
free choice of the trade or profession or art 
which he chose to follow. But one atom of 



60 CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRACY 

compulsion or coercion and liberty is gone and 
we should have a socialized state, the utmost 
travesty upon democracy. 

Human relations must forever remain volun- 
tary and pliable if there is to be justice and ad- 
vance. Socialism would set them as in a mold. 
Autocracy would hold them as in a vise. The 
renunciation of actual independence can be car- 
ried too far and laws should not needlessly em- 
phasize such renunciations. No man's life 
should be baffled or dwarfed by governmental 
restraints in a self-governing nation. Certainly 
no restrictive law should ever emanate from the 
government acting as a separate entity and 
apart from the will of the people. There is no 
such thing as the will of the government apart 
from the will of the people in a democracy un- 
less some form of usurpation exists within the 
government. 

XXV 

DEMOCRACY AND THE DELEGATION OF 
POWER 

Lovers of democracy should regard with im- 
mediate suspicion any smoke screen of secrecy 
which any agency of the government throws 
out to conceal its purposes. Privacy of action 
is to a certain extent essential in the conduct of 
the public business in times of danger, but there 
is no excuse whatever for privacy of purpose. 
The purpose is the people's, the method of its 



CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRACY 61 

attainment only is entrusted to their govern- 
mental agencies. 

No intellectual over-lordship is tolerable in a 
democracy. A free people can very well have 
too much centralized thinking. The govern- 
ment, and those who administer it, are not the 
guardians of the people ; they are not even the 
people's trustees. They exercise only a dele- 
gated power. Inspiration, example, devotion 
to service, these are open to all, but the people 
elect no man to govern or to rule over them. 
They elect one of their own number, in whom 
they have confidence, to administer the govern- 
ment according to the Constitution upon which 
all have agreed, and to perform the well-defined 
functions allotted him under that Constitution. 

The chief executive administers, executes, at 
the utmost leads ; he neither governs nor rules, 
having no continuing powers apart from his 
office, and no power whatever but that which is 
vested in him by the people to be used for the 
general benefit for a limited duration of time. 
He does not impose his will upon the people. 
It must never be forgotten that we have set up 
a democracy which is governed only by prin- 
ciples, not a system which is governed by men. 

XXVI 

THE RELATION OF THE PUBLIC OFFICIAL AND 
THE CITIZEN 
In the scheme of American democracy no awe 
attaches to government in its executive ca- 



62 CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRACY 

pacity. Just as the government, representing 
and symbolizing our nationality, our hopes and 
aspirations, and truthfully expressing the will 
of all the people, commands our admiration, 
confidence and allegiance, so do the public serv- 
ants of the people command our respect and our 
support so long as they faithfully perform their 
duties. But there is nothing sacred in office- 
holding merely as office-holding. And no citi- 
zen has any claim of any sort whatever upon 
any office beyond the exact term allotted him 
by the suffrage of his fellow citizens. 

Our Constitution sets up no Olympus. It cre- 
ates no supermen. Plain American citizens, 
and our Constitution recognizes no others, dele- 
gate to other plain American citizens the re- 
sponsibility of acting for them in the conduct 
of the public business. No change occurs in 
the status of the office-holder. No halo is vis- 
ible about his head. 

No power which is exercised by the official is 
or can be other than a delegated power, and no 
power which is delegated is or can be relin- 
quished by the citizen. The responsibility of 
the citizen is not and can not be passed on to 
the politician, to the representative, or to the 
executive. These, in their different degrees, 
are merely the agents of the private citizen, and 
in themselves have no vested rights in the gov- 
ernment except the basic rights inherent in 
their own citizenship. 



CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRACY 63 

We should never forget that those who hold 
office in a democracy derive their authority 
solely from the people whom they represent, 
whose business it is their duty to conduct, and 
who maintain them, and that the people are the 
only guarantors of the existence of the author- 
ity vested in the office-holder as agent or rep- 
resentative. 

While we all know these things to be true, we 
do not in the easy habit of democracy give them 
much thought or lay much stress upon them, 
and we too readily and too frequently relapse 
into the old vernacular of power and speak of 
being ruled and governed as though by individ- 
uals and not by our own voluntary conformity 
to principles which have shaped our convic- 
tions and determined our duties. 

Old habits of thinking and of speaking, to- 
gether with less pardonable negligences, have 
permitted the development of a strong and 
growing tendency to forget these homely and 
salutary truths on the part of the office-holder 
and also to a considerable extent on the part of 
the citizen. Once secure in his place the office- 
holder in many instances easily reverts to the 
comfortable and sustaining idea of the direct 
exercise of power by divine right, or to some 
other equally agreeable fallacy, and the indif- 
ferent citizen too often appears to acquiesce. 

This attitude of mind — an assumption on the 
part of the office-holder as vulgar as it is false ; 



r 

r 

64 CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRACY 

essentially the betrayal of a trust in spirit if 
not in fact — leads naturally and inevitably to an 
autocratic arrogance, to irresponsibility of ac- 
tion, to a blurred and obscured sense of duty 
and obligation, to resentment of just criticism 
or direction, and above all, to great extrava- 
gance and carelessness, if not to actual irregu- 
larity, in the use of the public funds, and on the 
part of the citizen to resentment, dissatisfac- 
tion, disgust and irritation. 

Such an attitude on the part of those holding 
office in a democracy is wholly unbecoming and 
undemocratic, and it is necessary to protest as 
frequently and as strongly as possible against 
it not only because it makes men inefficient and 
untrustworthy in office, but even more because 
of its undermining effect on the standards of 
the people who, witnessing such exhibitions and 
receiving such evidences from day to day, 
might well lose confidence both in their institu- 
tions and in their ability as a people to admin- 
ister them. 

XXVII 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE PUBLIC OFFICIAL 

The psychology of the public official who ex- 
ercises the people's power, or who expends the 
people's money with such a liberal, such a per- 
sonal, gesture, deserves, and will receive, the 
most careful study by all lovers of true democ- 



CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRACY 65 

racy. Democracy has more to fear from the 
foes, and the fools, of its own household than 
from all other hostile forces combined. 

All lovers of democracy will welcome the day 
when the office seeks the man and not the man 
the office. Democracies are not ungrateful, but 
they do undoubtedly hold to a very strict ac- 
countability those who voluntarily propose 
themselves for office as exceptionably capable of 
conducting the public business. 

When the office seeks the man the people are 
conscious of a difference, but the private citizen 
who asks the votes of his fellow citizens must 
give very definite evidence of meritorious serv- 
ice before the people, sensibly enough, become 
conscious of any special obligation to him. 

It is fortunate, then, that the psychology of 
office-holding is under the steady scrutiny of 
all the people. Its manifestations are of many 
sorts. Few men remain unchanged who exer- 
cise great power. There still lingers in some 
unexpected quarters a strong monarchial bias, 
a strange imperialistic squint, altogether at 
variance with every fundamental principle of 
democracy. 

There is, it would seem, no more common hal- 
lucination than that which convinces each one 
of us that we could manage the public business 
so well that its conduct should be permanently 
entrusted to our care. Almost every page of 
history records the activities of some individ- 



66 CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRACY 

ual attempting to seize power fully convinced 
that he could exercise it for his own, if not for 
the general, benefit. This may be called almost 
a universal trait so exceedingly common it is 
and always has been. This time-old instinct, 
the instinct to rule implanted in us for our own 
self-government, we degrade and misapply by 
our attempts to govern others. 

Office-holders of very average origin develop 
amusing doubts of the capacity of "the people" 
to govern themselves. Great parties have gone 
to shipwreck on the theory that their leaders 
knew what the people needed better than the 
people knew themselves, forgetful altogether of 
that great body of keen intelligences which 
make up the determining, though unofficial, 
leadership of the people. It is this unofficial 
leadership which in a democracy controls, by 
the creation of what we call public opinion, the 
actions of the majority which causes those 
sharp reactions which are so unaccountable and 
disconcerting to statesmen bent upon the pur- 
suit of their own purposes regardless of the 
people's will. 

Authority in all its forms clings fondly to old 
habits. Glamour screens it like a mist. Even 
in our democracy a belief in the divine right to 
rule can sometimes be detected in officials. 
These are insidious and baneful survivals of old 
instincts. They are like the imperialistic idea, 
or the militarist idea, or the idea of accumula- 



CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRACY 67 

tion, barbarous survivals from uncivilized 
times. They exist as active forces only in the 
minds of men still unreleased from obsolete tra- 
ditions. But while they linger they must be 
combated. The management of the public af- 
fairs must be as little as possible entrusted to 
persons dominated by such unrealities. And 
generally, and along all lines, the management 
of the public affairs must steadily be removed 
from the grasp of selfish personal ambition. 

There must, of necessity, be those who exe- 
cute the people's will and who administer the 
people's business and who, in so doing, exercise 
a certain definite leadership inherent in such 
obligations ; the legislator and the chief execu- 
tive are in honor bound to employ their highest 
abilities in the public service, and as righteous 
conduct is in itself a force, so the able and pa- 
triotic legislator or executive outlives in the 
spirit of the nation the brief limits set to his 
term of public duty. Noble and impersonal 
traditions enrich a nation incalculably. The 
supreme service which alone can add to the 
number of such traditions democracy seeks, and 
for such services reserves its most sublime re- 
wards; a living influence for good against the 
extent of which no limit of time or space is set ; 
a daily evoking of high standards by the simple 
mention of a name; an added confidence in all 
things good ; a deeper faith because of high ex- 
ample; a deeper assurance of the present and 



68 CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRACY 

final beneficence of the purpose which surrounds 
us ; the immortality of love and veneration. 

From these high rewards of service none who 
merit them can be excluded. But mere election 
to office, though that office be the highest in the 
gift of the people, creates no superman, endows 
no man with wisdom, makes no man infallible, 
nor does it elevate the holder of the office by one 
hair's breadth above his fellow citizens. 

And this should impose no debilitating re- 
straint upon the development of personal great- 
ness, for certainly none should be imposed if the 
advance of mankind and not the mere continu- 
ance of life is the aim. Already in the service 
of democracy have appeared, at least so we 
Americans believe, two of the most august 
figures in all the history of the world — Wash- 
ington, the Virginia planter, and Lincoln, the 
Illinois backwoodsman. It is the difference be- 
tween Nero and Washington, between Napoleon 
and Lincoln, which democracy would empha- 
size. Strong men may emulate Washington 
and Lincoln, if they can ; they may not emulate 
Nero or Napoleon. 

In the old monarchial order of things kings, 
and those who exercised power, the executives 
and administrators and legislators of those 
days, were responsible for their own acts. They 
represented their own power, and their power 
over the people who lived subject to them, but 
they did not pretend that they represented the 



CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRACY 69 

people themselves, or the consent of the people, 
in the sense that they executed the people's will 
and not their own, which might or might not be 
concerned with the good of the people. The 
entire responsibility of decision rested upon the 
leaders, the people merely sustained them in 
their decisions; in extreme cases they revolted 
against them. Revolt was the only means by 
which the people could protest the decisions of 
their rulers ; a primitive method to which not a 
few would resort to-day if opportunity offered. 

But this state of things is not true of a de- 
mocracy exercising its governmental functions 
by representatives. The citizen himself is the 
responsible unit, the real legislator, not the rep- 
resentative, the executive, nor the office-holder. 
The citizen remains responsible for the acts of 
his agents in all circumstances, and this fact 
must of necessity change the fundamental atti- 
tude of the office-holder to the people at large. 
As the word implies, and was intended to imply, 
a representative is one who represents, but he 
is not the thing represented. 

In seeking and accepting office the obligation 
honestly and intelligently to discharge his du- 
ties is on the office-holder, while the responsi- 
bility both for his selection and for his acts 
must inevitably remain vested in the people who 
elect him. While as in every-day affairs an 
agent may act for an owner, the distinct rela- 
tion which the one bears to the other we know 



70 CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRACY 

very well can never be confused or obscured 
without danger. So in the relations of the citi- 
zen holding office to the citizens at large there 
should be no ambiguity, no basic misconception, 
upon either part. 

Looseness of expression very often leads to 
looseness of thinking. We are continually 
hearing the incumbent of an office spoken of as 
though the authority and responsibility vested 
in the office were inherent in the man himself, 
indeed as though he had been born possessed of 
such authority. We should for the sake of our 
democracy take care to separate the man from 
the office, otherwise our president would loom a 
superman one hundred million strong. 

The real relation of the people to their most 
important public servants is well illustrated by 
the half-quizzical, half-serious, altogether be- 
nign figure of Uncle Sam, who is invariably por- 
trayed as the master of the situation, giving 
council, censure, or praise; always sustaining 
and helpful, even when admonishing. That tall, 
lean, shrewd-faced figure typifies the American 
people, ever at the elbow of their chief magis- 
trate, his truest friend, best councilor and 
safest confidant. 

Our English cousins having a like need, have 
embodied the spirit of their democracy in the 
sturdy figure of John Bull, who also cautions, 
comforts, admonishes or points the way, with- 
out fear or favor, and who symbolizes the free 



CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRACY 11 

spirit and sound common sense of a free people 
in their relations to their governmental agen- 
cies, and to their own affairs. 

XXVIII 

EDUCATION IN CITIZENSHIP 
Education in citizenship in some adequate 
form is a well-recognized need of the hour. The 
individual, who is the essential legislator, the 
one binding himself to the observation of law 
for the benefit of himself and his fellows, and 
who is bound by them in turn, must reserve to 
himself the right to understand his duties, and 
the duties of those to whom he delegates the 
authority to represent him in the actual draft- 
ing of laws and the actual conduct of the public 
business, and to have his children taught those 
duties, so that the essential legislator of suc- 
ceeding generations may be able to preserve 
what is good in the machinery of the adminis- 
tration of the public business and to improve it 
steadily. It is vitally important to the citizen, 
and to his fellow citizen, that each should ap- 
prehend the full circumference of his public 
duties and that each should unfailingly perform 
them. 

XXIX 

INTERNATIONAL CITIZENSHIP 
National citizenship we have for some time 
sensed, though not completely. We have now 
to consider also a new and greater citizenship — 



M dONSMVAf IVfi DEMOCRACY 

international citizenship ; world citizenship. 
The obligations of this new citizenship are des- 
tined to increase from year to year. We can 
not evade them if we would. 

Neither individuals, communities nor nations 
can live for themselves alone. As the individ- 
ual derives most of his happiness, and much of 
his well-being, from others, so others are de- 
pendent upon him in turn for the completion of 
their lives, thus each becomes responsible to the 
other. So it is with communities, and so in the 
modern world it must increasingly become with 
nations. The4mmediate communication of in- 
telligence, swift transportation, and the inti- 
mate association and cooperation of nations, 
amounting as it does to absolute interdepend- 
ence, precludes any nation from living any 
longer for itself alone. 

In truth the world has become a great com- 
munity, in which the nations, while remaining 
distinct, like families in a neighborhood, yet 
recognize and conform to a common standard 
for the common good ; thus we are brought face 
to face with international democracy. This in- 
ternational democracy will not, we may be sure, 
encroach upon nationality, nor set up any super- 
government. But it will bring ultimate har- 
mony in international policies by a real, even if 
unwritten, alliance of all democratic peoples. 
The simpler the m^ans by which international 



CONSERVATIVE DiSMOCBACf 78 

democracy seeks to attain its ends the more cer- 
tain their attainment will become. 

There can be much of principle but little of 
political detail in our relations with our fellow 
international citizens. Our best individual con- 
tribution to international citizenship will be 
found in the sober and enlightened citizenship 
we give to our own nation. No man who is a 
poor citizen of his own country will for that 
reason be a better citizen of the world. The 
fusion of nations like the fusion of races is as 
impossible as it is undesirable until a like devel- 
opment, experience and purpose unite them. 
Nations must be as free as individuals, uncon- 
strained in their evolution save by those prin- 
ciples of right and equal justice from which 
neither man nor nation can ever be exempt. 

The agreement of nations, the conformity of 
nations to those high laws which govern all 
human actions and all human relations, and 
the measure of international unity which such 
adherence must entail ; the friendly coopera- 
tion of nations, alliance in the face of com- 
mon peril, the trusteeship of civilization, rather 
than an arbitrary, restrictive and ill-assorted 
association under a super-government, should 
be the hope and purpose of the international 
citizen. There may be a mismating of nations 
as well as of individuals. We must not hand- 
cuff the nations together ; penalties will no more 
restrain nations than men; the great union 



U CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRACY 

which the days are strengthening rests upon 
no written document, but upon the fundamental 
principles of democracy. 

XXX 

LARGER PURPOSES 

Democracy seeks to establish not only the 
primary responsibility of power, but also the 
obligation of power. Power of every sort, of 
every origin, is at all times answerable to or- 
ganized society; national power is not exempt, 
economic power is not exempt, industrial power 
is not exempt, personal power is not exempt. 
All power which results from the association of 
individuals must submit to regulation by organ- 
ized society, and can exist only as an instru- 
mentality of organized society. It is a servant 
not a master. 

But while this is true it is well to remember 
that the standards of democracy are not all 
material or industrial or even social standards. 
Upon just material and social foundations de- 
mocracy would raise a superstructure of intel- 
lectual and spiritual development. 

Human evolution must go forward upon all 
these planes harmoniously if we are to compre- 
hend our environment and to enjoy our oppor- 
tunities. We must pull with the universe, and 
we must all pull together. Men are of various 
minds ; of wide diversity of gifts ; true freedom 
and true opportunity lie in the right of perfect 



CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRACY 75 

self -development. By such development we all 
approach the same standards, share the same 
obligations, and achieve unity of purpose. All 
men do not desire the same rewards. No scep- 
ter could have compensated Shakespeare for the 
loss of his pen; the command of armies would 
not have reconciled Columbus to the sacrifice of 
his caravels. It is therefore well to remember, 
if we are sometimes impatient with the agen- 
cies of democracy because they have not al- 
ready grappled successfully with all the details 
of those questions which we call practical, the 
strong reluctance democracy has ever felt to 
abridge that higher freedom which is in itself 
the only certain guarantee we hold. 

XXXI 

SERVICE AND LEADERSHIP 
Externals merely as externals are of no mo- 
ment whatever to democracy. No gulf yawned 
between General Washington and the men clad 
in buckskin and homespun from the right bank 
of the Potomac. Lincoln would have been the 
first to disclaim any singular merit. Neither 
was aloof from his neighbors. The awful 
splendor which clothes their figures as they still 
sway the destinies of men by the compelling 
greatness of their example is the radiance of 
their beneficence ; they were good men and the 
people knew and loved them. 
The service of democracy calls for new 



76 CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRACY 

standards of ambition, for new standards of 
service. Democracy breeds a nation of leaders. 
It is more probable than improbable that every 
town and county in the land could, if need 
arose, furnish the nation with a chief executive 
and cabinet of able, self-reliant men, perfectly 
competent to carry on the normal public busi- 
ness, and shrewdly aware of the general direc- 
tion in which to steer the ship of state even in 
uncharted waters. 

Freedom makes men competent. It makes 
men ashamed to be ignoble. It develops cour- 
age, responsibility and self-respect. It places 
a sobering obligation upon every man and 
woman, and, even half comprehended, groped 
toward, its strength has been sufficient to unite 
a hundred million people in one great, unselfish 
purpose. 

No form of government can so surely sum- 
mon courage without brutality, intellect with- 
out sophistry, or exaltation without fanaticism 
to its service, or to the service of the world, as 
democratic government. 

Democracy permits of wide difference of type 
and choice of service. George Mason and 
George Washington were undoubtedly men of 
aristocratic feeling, but no one can question the 
purity of their democracy. With them the 
more complete development meant only greater 
responsibility and higher service. 



CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRACY 77 

George Mason exemplified his democracy by 
his profound faith in a hardy and self-reliant 
people at a time when few shared his faith. 
Owner of thousands of acres, he broke down 
entail; strict churchman he wrote in the Vir- 
ginia Bill of Rights that religion must be free ; 
slave-owner he struggled mightily to limit and 
abolish slavery. 

Mason's failure to prohibit the importation of 
slaves was perhaps chief among the reasons 
which caused him to refuse to sign the Consti- 
tution of the United States which he had helped 
to frame. His opposition to its ratification by 
Virginia, a noble and constructive opposition, 
forced the adoption of the first ten amendments, 
eight of which are almost word for word his 
own. These amendments in themselves em- 
body most of the fundamental principles of ap- 
plied democracy. 

George Mason was one of those great men 
who sought the general good with absolute dis- 
regard of the consequences to himself or to the 
privileged class to which he belonged, desiring 
no special benefits for himself or his posterity ; 
single in his purpose to make the world a better 
place for all mankind. 

All that he did that was radical he did only 
because it was reasonable, and he did it without 
the shadow of fanaticism, or the least intem- 
perance of expression. Resolute, sane, clear- 
visioned and impartial, he broke with the tra- 



78 CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRACY 

dition of a thousand years and formulated a 
new philosophy of government, leaving out no 
essential element in his selection and arrange- 
ment of the great fundamental truths to which 
the world was then awakening. Yet so quietly 
did he do his work that his countrymen have 
scarcely begun to realize the nature or the vast- 
ness of their debt to him. 

It may be said of George Mason that he was 
the world's pioneer in the application of the 
principles of pure democracy to the structure of 
a state. He laid the foundations of our nation 
broad and deep upon the very adamantine, ever- 
lasting and eternal truths. It was he who first 
wrote the word happiness in any constitution. 

Washington, perhaps we may believe, gave 
his democracy its supreme expression in the 
scornful reply which he addressed to Colonel 
Nicola, who had begged him to accept a crown 
from the dissatisfied army at Newburg. 

"Be assured, sir," wrote the disgusted gen- 
eral, "no occurrence in the course of the war 
has given me more painful sensations than your 
information of there being such ideas existing 
in the army. I am much at a loss to conceive 
what part of my conduct could have given en- 
couragement to an address which to me seems 
big with the greatest mischiefs that can befall 
my country. If I am not deceived in the knowl- 
edge of myself, you could not have found a 
person to whom your schemes are more disa- 
greeable. Let me conjure you, if you have any 
regard for your country, concern for yourself or 



CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRACY 79 

posterity, or respect for me, to banish these 
thoughts from your mind, and never communi- 
cate, as from yourself or any one else, a senti- 
ment of a like nature." 

Lincoln, who so perfectly exemplified the 
homelier aspects of democracy, proved to the 
world that sublimity is an attribute of charac- 
ter, not a thing of externals. Without one pre- 
tension; without one external grace, his good- 
ness has become the illimitable measure of his 
greatness. Jefferson, the man of intellect, by 
nature exclusive and refined, an artist as well 
as a sage, rested his abiding faith in all the peo- 
ple and in so doing linked his name with immor- 
tality. 

XXXII 

CONCLUSION 

Our apprehension and our comprehension of 
the principles of democracy are yet both vague 
and imperfect. Our application of these prin- 
ciples to the affairs of every-day life is still 
more imperfect. But we have made some 
progress on the right road and we shall neither 
be stayed nor turned aside or turned back for 
long. 

In our ignorance we shall sometimes be mis- 
led, human nature will not immediately and 
always present itself in its best aspects; we 
shall no doubt often mistake the letter for the 
spirit, often mistake our individual purposes 
for the great purposes which finally must shape 



80 CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRACY 

our ends; even our enthusiasms may divert us 
from the sober realities and solemn verities of 
democracy. But democracy has never been im- 
patient. Out of the school of life is coming a 
more reasonable humanity, a people better 
taught, more given to integrity of purpose, 
more questioning; a people who have taken into 
their own hands the creation of a nation and the 
conduct of a continent, a people who have delib- 
erately placed the leadership of principles high 
above the leadership of men. 

Democracy, in itself a thing of the spirit, 
must pass into the spirit of the people, beyond 
even its institutions, just as Christianity is 
passing beyond the churches into the matter-of- 
fact, every-day life of the people, where it be- 
longs. Christian creeds and dogmas seem to be 
all but forgotten, but the Christian spirit was 
never before so potent and alive, its power was 
never half so irresistible. It has met a great 
need. It has been vindicated. Men are thank- 
ful for it and their hearts are open to it with- 
out fear, hypocrisy or cant. It will be so with 
democracy. Even its detractors sooner or 
later must inevitably find their refuge in its 
principles. 

A little clearer understanding of democracy, 
a more perfect love of its principles, these are 
the best gifts which this generation can make 
to its youth, and to the youth of succeeding 
generations. Youth understands democracy 



CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRACY 81 

without the need of any definition. Never be- 
fore has the world owed so great a debt to its 
young men who have in actual fact made of 
their bodies the bulwark of Christian civiliza- 
tion. We shall leave to them the tasks of to- 
morrow with a confidence we do not feel in our 
dealings with the problems of to-day. 

The vital and concentrated spirit of youth, the 
consecrated spirit of youth, youth consciously 
animated by a high constructive purpose, by a 
great intention to achieve the world's regenera- 
tion, is vivid and potent and articulate as it has 
never been before since the dawn of history. 
With this splendid spirit faith has returned, 
religion itself has taken on a new meaning, sac- 
rifice a nobler and a higher significance. 
Thanks to their splendid spirit in the war Chris- 
tianity and democracy have both triumphed. 

If age and experience accept the heroic im- 
molation of youth for any purpose less than to 
preserve all that is best in the world heritage 
which youth is to enjoy as the fruit of its sac- 
rifices and its victories, then age and experience 
are unworthy of their trust. Those who have 
gladly fought for an ideal must find as high a 
value set upon that ideal now when they return 
as we appeared to set upon it when we called 
them to arms to defend it. Those who will not 
return must not have died in vain. 

The world is aflame with noble enthusiasms. 
The calculations of selfish ambition must give 



82 CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRACY 

way before the realization of the overwhelming 
debt we owe to youth. The free world is theirs 
because they have kept it and made it free, and 
we must take care that we do not diminish its 
freedom nor dim its high ideals. 

Plainly experience must fulfill its duty in 
the great awakening by distinguishing between 
those goals which are desirable and obtainable 
and those which are neither desirable nor ob- 
tainable. We must resolutely put aside the 
blandishments of imperialism and autocracy 
and all the plausible sophistries of socialism and 
cleave unswervingly to true, temperate and sim- 
ple democracy, for therein abides the hope of 
the world. 

THE END 



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